Ohio Department of Education Families

 

Topics:	Behavior and Discipline, Families, High School (9-12), Linking Families to Community Resources, Middle (5-8), Safety, Health and Nutrition, Truancy and Mobility, Urban
Geography:  Urban    Special Needs:  None  Race:  Hispanic, African American   Gender:  Both			Contact Name: Joan Muir, Ph.D Associate Training Director Center for Family Studies University of Miami Contact Email: jmuir@med.miami.edu
Brief Strategic Family Therapy is designed to: Prevent, reduce and/or treat adolescent behavior problems such as drug use, conduct problems, delinquency, sexually risky behavior, aggressive/violent behavior and association with antisocial peers; Improve pro-social behaviors such as school attendance and performance; and Improve family functioning, including effective parental leadership and management, positive parenting, and parental involvement with the child and his or her peers and school. BSFT typically is delivered in 12-16 family sessions, but may be delivered in as few as eight or as many as 24 sessions, depending on the severity of the communication and management problems within the family. Sessions are conducted at locations that are convenient to the family, including, in some cases, the family's home. Hispanic families have been the principal recipients of BSFT, but African American families also have participated in the intervention. BSFT is an evidence-based practice reviewed by SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence-based Practices.